Catalyzing Transformation: Reconceptualizing Climate Resiliency Planning through Participatory, Community-Engaged Practices
Tarsitano, Carlo
:
2020-12
Abstract
The compounding effects of inequitable decisions, policies, and investments within urban areas has functioned to exclude, dispossess, and remove residents of low-income communities and communities of color. As a result of decades of disenfranchisement and disinvestment, many communities are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change (i.e., urban flooding, heat exposure, climate gentrification) and experience challenges in adapting to and coping with continuous disaster-related threats. Yet, when disaster occurs, residents within vulnerable communities often experience more than physical loss and damage. They experience a range of visceral losses in the destruction of social and emotional systems of aid that are specifically cultivated in their communities. As such, city planning for climate-related risks often overlooks the interconnected functions of communities as a form of cultural capital (Yosso, 2005) and fails to acknowledge other non-tangible losses residents experience concurrently with physical loss and damage. This project seeks to use highlight such interconnected forms of capital through asset-based and public pedagogy frameworks to support more equitable engagement for city-wide climate adaptation planning.